


Low Pressure

by Phosphorite



Series: post-series giveaway companion [1]
Category: Free!
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-14
Updated: 2014-11-14
Packaged: 2018-02-25 09:56:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2617610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phosphorite/pseuds/Phosphorite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The hall dances in light like she dances through the crowd, and this is not his world anymore.</p><p>[post-series one-shot in a collection of stories written for my giveaway]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Low Pressure

**Author's Note:**

> less than a month ago as i visited japan again, i bought a set of doujinshi for various ships to give away in celebration for the different pairings on this show. there are so many great dynamics on this show, after all.
> 
> this is the first of those stories, one i chose to write in this style because i wanted to explore a more subdued and vulnerable aspect of rin and sousuke's dynamic. also, for some reason over half of my lines ended up rhyming with or without any intention to, so i decided to just embrace and run with it instead.
> 
> i hope you enjoy. or not, that's cool too.

 

 

 

 

It’s kind of a game, and all three of them know.

Her hair gleams like silk when he pulls up the ribbon and fastens it at the base of her neck; spilling over her shoulders, it’s a cascade of burgundy that drapes all the way down to the neckline of her dress. When she turns her head, it’s a smile that lights up the entire room, and he knows without a shadow of a doubt that when they enter the venue tonight, nobody will be looking at him at all.

“If you don’t want the press mistaking your sister for your girlfriend again, maybe you should stop bringing her along.”

A tiny, wry smile trickles across the room like the smoke that precedes the words; she yanks back her head even before he does, and scrunches up the side of her mouth. Years may have dropped any stilted honorifics from her speech, but her tone remains playful when she counters the retort:

“That was _one time_ , Sousuke. And I’m nobody’s _sister_. If anything, oniichan will be there with _me_.”

The laughter her words trigger is amused in tone, and when Sousuke reaches out his hand she leans in eagerly to grasp it. Twirling around, she tilts back her head and brushes at her undulating hem; when she speaks, her question already contains the answer.

“So, how do I look?”

Still, for a split second the response stalls.

“You look amazing,” Sousuke finally breathes out, and Rin does not need to lift his eyes to know the words are not directed at Gou at all.

 

 

 

 

It’s kind of a game, and both of them know.

It has been that way for–– years, maybe?, although it’s hard to say when a wish becomes a prophecy of the self-fulfilling kind; when it was that _it_ turned into _this_ , when _this_ turned into _that_ , and when _that_ turned into something altogether too complicated to define.

(The clatter of Gou’s heels clicks against the pavement when she walks, two by three by two steps at a time. The _you think there’s going to be any other Japanese people around?_ mixes with the _ahh, I hope at least the food is good_ like the salt of the ocean mixes with the bayside air, and somewhere behind them the sky bleeds in muted wine.)

They walk behind her, like they always do.

Sometimes, he can still hear the echo of laughter and guileless spirit hanging in the space between them, but it’s a naïvety he cannot, at twenty six, any longer afford; and when the words come, they feel awfully borrowed, as much as they also feel like something he has spoken a thousand times before.

“How many more times do I have to tell you,” he says, keeping his voice low, “Smoking is terrible for you.”

“But if I quit, then what excuse would you have left,” Sousuke responds, calm eyes fixed on the road, “To call me out on whether or not I do?”

Because the game, the way it works is like this:

Rin pretends he doesn’t know, and Sousuke pretends he doesn’t know, and at the end of the day both of them still know.

 

 

 

 

The hall dances in light like she dances through the crowd, and this is not his world anymore.

Her hair sways when she leans in for a photograph, a mirage of energy and excitement in his stead. There was a time he had no need for a doppelgänger, a time when he could glide in and out of flash lights and thrive on the artificial attention, but the air of the venue sits low like an impending storm and all he wants to do is go home.

“I’m going outside,” Sousuke mutters, echoing his thoughts.

When Sousuke turns there’s a brief look of hesitation on his face; the hand that leans over Rin’s shoulder is warm, but the fingers that linger on the groove of his neck fall half an inch short from touching his skin.

(It doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel the heat of it,

doesn’t mean he cannot feel everything.)

But he stands still as he watches Sousuke go, stands still as a passing reporter swarms him with questions she will later misquote him on, when the lights continue to flash where Gou twirls and dances and all the while he wonders, wonders––

 

 

 

 

_How much longer are you planning on letting this go on?_

There’s an unusual gravity to Gou’s voice, her touch reassuring and firm; the reporters are huddled elsewhere fawning over someone’s latest fashion, and in the cocoon of sudden peace, the part of him that should feel startled also knows it’s the one question he has been waiting for all along.

“It’s not that simple,” he says anyway, and it comes out weary, it comes out light.

Because the past is like an old, worn-out photograph that he still clings to in the hopes that it will return, the innocence of a life when his laughter rang without a trace of fear; when his smile held no second-guessing, when Sousuke’s hand didn’t stall, when the thought of losing your best friend to a feeling with no name was the most incomprehensible possibility of all.

“It’s not that simple,” he says again, and it comes out empty, it comes out a lie.

Because when Gou lifts her head, her eyes flicker with something unreadable, until her mouth twists with the words she does not need to say.

_And in trying to protect the both of you,_

_what is it that you managed to save?_

 

 

 

 

(Rin knows, of course;

that he has saved

seven years of dodging personal questions;

five months practicing a fake smile;

two weeks of silence after Sousuke’s first break-up;

six years pretending not to notice, how there never was another one.)

 

 

 

 

He finds Sousuke by the patio, bored out of his mind.

“I hate these things,” he sighs, sitting on a stone sculpture that must have cost their combined salaries to make; it prompts a genuine smile as Rin leans against it, and tilts his head towards the darkening sky. 

“You didn’t have to come.”

He doesn’t mean it as a rebuke.

Sousuke doesn’t take it as one.

“I didn’t,” Sousuke agrees softly, and the garden is luminescent with the residue of the venue. “But then, where would I have gone?”

Rin turns his eyes away.

(Turn by turn it’s still a game that they play, because to reach the end would be worse than to fail; although the years have helped build a bridge across teenage failures, both of them know what it’s like to lose everything, and he always thought it simply wasn’t a gamble either one of them was at liberty to take.)

He thinks of his sister, of the flicker in her gaze, he thinks of her downcast smile.

_But how can there be a gamble in a game with no winners_

_when all that’s left worth wagering is time?_

“So,“ Sousuke begins, resigned to their usual script, but the next syllable dies on his lips.

(Because this is one game, one gamble Rin knows he is finally competent enough to re-define.)

 

 

 

 

Strangely enough,

the kiss doesn’t taste like smoke, or the ashes of a past left burning in the wake of Rin’s fingers on Sousuke’s wrist.

(No––

it’s the final bubble at the bottom of his champagne glass, it’s the salt of the ocean from the bayside air, and the lights of the garden that come alive like at the back of his mind.)

 

 

 

 

When he pulls back, Sousuke breathes in.

The space between them feels smaller, softer, like a weave pulling with something reminiscent from their youth. When Sousuke finally speaks, there are no barriers in his voice, only an escape Rin can seize in case he feels like he should.

“…If you’re not careful, you might end up giving someone the wrong idea.”

And perhaps, the intuitiveness of that fear should hurt–– but he knows, he knows as well as Sousuke knows, that from here on out it’s a game that’s theirs to create.

“Only if someone’s afraid of getting the right idea,” Rin says, because it might be his counter but it’s also a _dare_ ; a juvenile challenge, surely, yet also a silent plea;

_I don’t want to wait anymore_

_for choices I thought we couldn’t make_

When he leans to his feet, there’s a moment of silence amidst the distant murmur of a crowd.

“Then,” Sousuke says, and conceals his smile in the back of his hand. “Don’t you reckon those boring reporters should finally have something worth writing to their editors about?”

But it’s a grin that tugs on his lips, just as it tugs on Rin’s; and in the single step it takes to bridge their distance, in the ten it takes to cross over to the venue, in the fifteen it takes to find Gou,

the lights follow them in, and the air no longer hangs low.

 

 

 

 

-fin

**Author's Note:**

> i originally planned to write something more upbeat, but the image of the two of them as adults in a stand-still did not leave my mind; to me, their personalities always run the risk of being too self-conscious of change and its consequences, so i wanted to see how that might play out.
> 
> i'm very happy i decided to take that chance.
> 
> last, but not least: this story was written almost exclusively to 'fear and loathing' by marina and the diamonds. to me, it will forever remain the soundtrack to this little story.


End file.
